Salt Lake evening Democrat. [volume] (Salt Lake City, Utah) 1885-1887, 1887-03-19
STORIES OF BEECHER.
CARPENTER TELLS OF THE PREACH
ER'S LIFELONG LOVE OF HUMOR.
How He Surprised Girls School With
IngeniousIy Arranged Umbrellas-His
Belief Regarding the Doctrine of Eter-
nal Punishment - Carpenters Trip
Through the South.
Especial Correspondence

Especial Correspondence
WASHINGTON, March 9.
In the numerous articles published in the
papers about Henry Ward Beecher very little
is said about the humorous side of his charac-
ter He was full of humor, and it was In his
hearty sympathy with mankind that his great
est successes had their birth. He was not afraid
to say funny thing in the pulpit, and he once
said: 81 have been criticised because made
people laugh If l made them cry, L suppose
it would have been all right, but the Bible
don't say So"
~
He could tell story well, and remember
seeing one be once told about COW which he
had received in payment for debt. think
he told the story in one of his lectures. He
said:
at was a very bad debt and came to con-
slider it bad payment. She was thin COW,
but the former owner said she was better
than she looked being a cross between Jer-
sey and the Durham. She looked as If she
might have been cross between an old hair
trunk and an abandoned hoopskirt. 1 kept
the brute three days, and no one could ever
appreciate the suffering l endured in that
time The first night she broke through the
fence and reduced to pulp all the
Undertaking belonging to my next
door neighbor. She put her horns
through my bathtub and ate up all my
geraniums. She was to give three gallons of
milk day, but she seemed short just then,
and never had that to spare while we kept
her. The second day she walked into the
kitchen and upset pan of butter and tub
of lard. Then she fell down well, and when
1 got her out, at a cost of S., she took the
collie, whooping cough, or something, and
kept us awake all night. Not green thing
was left in my garden; my neighbours peach
trees and the rope on which his underwear
grew were as bare of fruit as singletree,
and he did not have twig of shrubbery left
| Ny neighbor came over to me and said:
"'Now, don't desire any quarrel, but 1
want you to keep your cow out of my shrub
berry,
"'And want you, my FRIEND said /, TO
keep your shrubbery out of my cow"
Harriet Beecher Stowe says that this hui
morous part of Henry Ward Beecher's ma
ture manifested itself when he was a boy.
While attending the ladies' seminary kept hy
his sister, young Henry, then II years of
age, had manifested no disposition toward
study, but passed his time in playing prac-
teal jokes. At one time, on a rainy day, he
fixed the umbrellas standing in the hall in
such way that the opening of the school
room door would send the whole thirty or
forty of them flying out into the street. The
trick was a success, and the school was put
into an uproar as soon as the hour of adjourn
ment approached, by the scream of the first
girl. who started somewhat in advance of the
| others for home.
M*a
At college he had his own plan Of culture
and followed this. He had table made by
a carpenter with hole in the middle, and a
fastened chair inside of this Getting into
this hole he would sit down with his books
all spread about him, and would thus study
with his materials at his hands. His boyish
humor still cropped out, Notwithstanding he
was looked upon as a future theolo-
| gian. Some of the tutors thought his
actions were hardly consistent with
his profession, and one of them under
took to correct him. This tutor was
Yankee who had good sense of the
| ridiculous. He was about seven feet tall
and proportionately thin. Henry Ward
Beecher knew the tutor was coming to lecture
him, and at the appointed time he moved out
of his room all of the chairs except one
with its legs cut OF and which in conse-
| quence was not higher than about a foot from
! the ground. He then crawled into his hole in
| the study table and pretended to be at work.
In a moment the long tutor arrived Henry
arose, but the tutor begged him not to be dis
| turbed and he looked around for a chair
Henry pointed to the low one, and the tutor
| began to sit down He lowered himself grad
ually, and then finding it so much lower than
he had thought it was stretched himself up to
his full seven feet and turned about and
looked at it. "Perhaps had better get you
another chair" said the student in the middle
of the table, rising with evident difficulty,
chat is too low for you"
"Oh, no, don't bother" was the reply, "this
| will do" and with that the tutor sat down
| with his knees higher than his chin. 1t
was impossible to have a solemn talk in such
position, and when he caught Henry Ward
Beecher's eye, and saw that he appreciated
the righteousness of the situation, he burst
out laughing, and Henry was freed from the
exhort9tion. This chair was afterward
named by Henry's classmates "the tutors
delight"
~
| Another good incident, which his sister
tells of him, occurred during his early preach
ing days in Indiana. One day, in crossing
\ Une Mldlln river, he was GnrOWn over MS
horses head into the water. When he came
| out, thoroughly soaked, Baptist minister
who saw him, said: "Well, Beecher, 1 am
glad to see you are coming to our ways You
have been immersed at last, and you are now
as good as any of U.s."
ooh, no." replied Beecher, as the crowd,
who had heard the Baptist preachers remark,
laughed at him. "My immersion was diff
ferent thing from that of your converts. !
was immersed by horse, and not by an ass. 7"
This was rather broad, but it may be that
the subject demanded it.
~
| l remember another retort of Beecher's,
which he uttered later in life, in which he
called one of the most noted of the officious
newspaper men of the time an ass 1t was
after one of Beecher's new departures that
this man wrote to him as follows:
Henry Ward Beecher:
DEAR SIR-You have made an ass of yourself
to-day. (Signed --.
ETo this Mr. Beecher Immediately responded,
and the reply, with the first letter, got into the
newspapers.
Mr. --:
SIR-The Lord saved you from ever making an
ass of yourself by making you one in the begin
ming. (Signed) HENRY WARD BEECHER-
A*z
Some funny things now and then occurred
in his Plymouth church meetings. At one
time the case was put of man who lived a
C. - L 4